


Magic Keys

by faithinthepoor



Series: Once Upon a Time [7]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-01
Updated: 2013-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-23 07:16:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/619497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faithinthepoor/pseuds/faithinthepoor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set following the episode Heart of Darkness</p>
            </blockquote>





	Magic Keys

**Author's Note:**

> In my series this follows my [Fairytale Drabbles](http://archiveofourown.org/works/618763), [Mirror Mirror](http://archiveofourown.org/works/618771), [This Provincial Life](http://archiveofourown.org/works/618775), [Viviane or Nimue](http://archiveofourown.org/works/618809), [Dreams and Wishes](http://archiveofourown.org/works/618851) and [All the Better To….](http://archiveofourown.org/works/619484)

Well it has finally happened. This town has ruined her. She’s tried to stand up to the challenges that it has thrown her way but in the end she hasn’t been strong enough. She survived neglect in her childhood and abuse in prison but she could not survive this simple little town. It has left her crushed and broken. She has been defeated. Storybrooke has won. 

The victory has not come in a way she would have expected. She thought things would be more dramatic. To be honest she secretly thought her demise would have come in the form of an epic battle. Clearly she has been spending too much time listening to theories about fairytales. It’s obvious now that Henry’s wrong because this is no fairytale. If it were there would have been a chance for good to triumph over evil. At the very least there would have been a climax; there might have even been blood. A fairytale would not have ended with something as simple as the turn of a key.

In a fairytale a key would have unlocked a door to somewhere significant. It would have led to secrets or treasures or horrors. It would not have been the key to her own front door. 

This is real life, this not a world of magic, but that key might as well have been a wand. The turning of it changed everything; it opened her eyes and broke her heart. Her world will never be the same again.

She knows that Henry meant well, he has only ever meant well, but his quest to prove that everything in this town relates to his precious book has gone way too far. Emma can barely look at him. She wants her old life back. She wishes she had never met him. For the first time ever she truly resents the fact that he showed up on doorstep. 

These are not the sort of thoughts she should be having about her son. It’s not his fault that he has turned out to be right. He’s not right about everything, his belief that the inhabitants of this town are fables brought to life still borders on delusional, but he’s right about the one thing that really matters to Emma. Regina is most definitely the villain of this story.

She can no longer dismiss her suspicions about Regina as farfetched flights of fancy. Regina may not be responsible for Graham’s death but it seems she definitely had something to do with Kathryn’s disappearance. Emma has no idea what Regina’s motive could be but Henry and his keys prove that the mayor had the means and opportunity to frame Mary Margaret. 

Knowing that Regina is responsible for Mary Margaret’s incarceration makes Emma feel sick to her stomach. She has played a major role in depriving her friend of her liberty. She honestly believed that she was doing the right thing. She thought she was protecting Mary Margaret from Regina but instead she was playing right into Regina’s hands.

Regina has been so many moves ahead of her that they haven’t even been playing the same game. The mayor kept insisting that she put more time and more effort into investigating what had happened to Kathryn. Regina made veiled threats about Emma’s job security and much clearer threats about the chances of them ever having sex again. The end result of this was that Regina had Emma looking for suspects even before it was clear that there was suspect to be found. She thought she was doing her job as the sheriff but instead she was just doing a fine job at being Regina’s minion

Emma had felt that she had no choice but detain Mary Margaret. The fingerprint evidence was damning and if Emma had ignored it she would have left herself open to legitimate accusations regarding incompetence and corruption. She meant what she said to Mary Margaret – if she hadn’t have arrested her roommate Regina would have had her over a barrel. Emma would have been replaced as sheriff and no one would have been able to stop Regina from ensuring that Mary Margaret went away for a very long time. 

She had believed that Regina was distraught about the disappearance of her friend and assumed that Mary Margaret was nothing more than a symbol. She misread Regina’s behaviour as a desire to see someone pay, to see justice done but this was never about justice. This was only ever about Mary Margaret.

That Regina has gone to this much effort to frame Mary Margaret makes Emma very uncomfortable. As well it should. Discomfort is a perfectly reasonable response to learning that the person you are involved with has framed someone for murder. Unfortunately for Emma, being presented with concrete proof that Regina is a deranged sociopath is not the thing that is truly troubling her. She’s not over the moon about it; it just doesn’t bother her anywhere near as much as the idea of Regina spending all of her time thinking about someone else does. 

Mary Margaret is her friend. The teacher stood by her when no one else would. If not for Mary Margaret’s aid Emma would have been forced to leave Storybrooke. She would have been driven out by Regina’s campaign to make accommodation an impossible option for her in this town. When she looks at things that way it’s possible to blame Mary Margaret for the fact that she stayed and if that’s the case Mary Margaret is also responsible for Emma’s subsequent liaison with Regina and every single headache that this has caused. She can’t seem to bring herself to hate Mary Margaret for that, even though it would be well within her rights, but that doesn’t mean she’s not considering hating Mary Margaret for the place of importance that the woman clearly holds for Regina.

Jealousy is not an emotion that Emma finds acceptable. It serves no real purpose and she’s proud that jealousy of this nature is not something that has plagued her before. She has known her share of envy, in fact she has had a lifetime of it, intimate knowledge of the shortcomings of the child services and criminal justice systems has seen to that, but resentment of this type is completely unknown to Emma. 

She was finding it almost impossible to deal with having seen Regina hold Mary Margaret’s hand during the interview and having to accept that Mary Margaret is important to Regina is completely overwhelming. Emma could probably live without attracting the kind of attention that makes Regina go to extreme lengths in order to get you arrested but if Regina is going to become all obsessive and single white female about someone, she wants it to be her.

In a way this is all Emma’s fault. Regina should never have been in the interview room in the first place. Emma had convinced herself that allowing the mayor in as an ‘impartial’ witness was in Mary Margaret’s best interest and was what a good sheriff would do if they happened to reside with someone detained on suspicion of murder. She had told herself that it was a noble and upstanding act that had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that when Regina made the request to be present for the interview she has whispering in Emma’s ear and her hand was down Emma’s pants.

Mayor Mills had insisted that Mary Margaret needed to be interrogated but Emma had refused to see a requirement for anything so harsh. She had been certain that Emma was innocent and in her mind she had made a clear demarcation between an interview and an interrogation. In retrospect that seems like a huge mistake. She wishes she had interrogated the hell out of Mary Margaret, she wishes she still could. Sadly it’s probably an abuse of her power as sheriff to grill Mary Margaret to find out what she did to make Regina hold her hand.

She wonders if Regina knew what she was unhappy about when she pulled her out into the hallway. She obviously didn’t like witnessing the physical contact between Regina and Mary Margaret but it was even worse to hear Regina talk about things of a personal nature with the teacher. Regina could have been lying, it’s clear that Regina has done a lot worse than lie, but there was something about her words that rang true. Especially when Emma considers what Regina said to her in the hallway about what having a broken heart can do to someone. The mayor might have just been trying to make a point but her words had almost seemed like a confession.

Emma doesn’t like to think about that moment in the hallway. It doesn’t make her feel good about herself. Her friend was suffering and Emma abandoned her in order to have some one on one time with Regina. She could pretend that it was an altruistic act, that she was trying to protect Mary Margaret from Regina, but she knows that’s not the case. Emma did want to get Regina away from Mary Margaret but it wasn’t for Mary Margaret’s sake, it was to ease her own jealousy. 

That moment in the hallway also highlighted just how much trouble she was really in. Even with all the shit that was going down, and despite how angry she was with Regina, all she could think about was how much she wanted to kiss her. That was the point where she told herself that things had to change. That she had to be a much better person. 

Mary Margaret has been good to her. Mary Margaret also happens to be hopelessly in love with David and that should be more than enough to override any jealousy Emma might feel. It’s not though. The only thing that makes her feel better about Mary Margaret right now is that, as sure as Emma is that the teacher did not kill Kathryn, she is even more positive that Mary Margaret is not capable of having a relationship Regina Mills. Anyone who blushes when their date sends them flowers would be swallowed alive by Regina and that fact is the one thing stopping Emma from slapping Mary Margaret across the face.

It makes her feel terrible that when Mary Margaret asked her to prove her innocence, the first thing Emma did was to run to Regina. She saw being sent away as a reprieve, it would have been poor form to leave while Mary Margaret was in the cell so having Mary Margaret ask her to go had felt like a gift. She’d planned on sneaking into Regina’s office and giving her the kiss she hadn’t been able to in the hallway but her plan was dashed when she found Regina talking to David. When she thinks about that, she realises she could put David’s name at the top of list of people she hates intensely right now. If he hadn’t have been there she would have spent time with Regina and she would not have been home when Henry arrived with his keys and tore her world apart.

Henry has gone now, which makes things easier for her. He’s taken his keys and left her alone with the lethal combination of heartbreak and a bottle of whiskey. 

She needs a key of her own. A key to time. Something that would allow her to go back, to change everything, to make it so she never met Henry and therefore never met Regina. She needs to go back because she can’t go forward and it’s not safe to stay where she is, not when learning what Regina really is hasn’t changed the way Emma feels about her. Regina is a monster but Emma still loves her, still wants her. She has no idea what to do with that knowledge so she does the only thing she can do – she takes a large gulp of whiskey. After that is done she will take another and then another. She will find temporary oblivion at the bottom of a glass and if she’s really, really lucky she will destroy some brain cells. 

Emma takes comfort as the whiskey’s warmth spreads through her chest and thinks that even though there is no way to change the past, with enough time, and enough alcohol, she could wipe it from her mind. Alcohol is the one thing that could destroy all of her memories of Regina. It is the key.


End file.
